1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital broadcast receiver, and more particularly to a digital broadcast receiver that is capable of receiving digital broadcast signals containing information in a plurality of languages and extracting information in a user-designated language from the information in the plurality of languages so that a user can view and listen to the extracted information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In digital broadcasting, large amounts of information can be transmitted. Therefore, caption information and audio information have been provided in a plurality of languages, so that a user can designate a desired language from the available languages. For example, with respect to captions, it is known in the art to insert closed caption data into the vertical blanking interval of video signals. In digital broadcasting, it is easy to insert the caption data representing captions in a plurality of languages so that a user can view captions in a desired language (hereinafter, referred to as a language designated for caption output), which is designated in advance, on a display screen.
It is also known in the art to display on a monitor screen characters generated by a character generator, which is called an on-screen display (OSD), provided in a receiver. The characters to be displayed by the OSD can be also selected among a plurality of languages.
Further, in digital broadcasting, audio can be also easily provided in two or more languages so that a user can designate a desired language (hereinafter, referred to as a language designated for audio output) among the plurality of languages.
For example, Japanese laid-open patent publication 2002-335467 discloses a system including an EEPROM for storing which language a user has designated among a plurality of languages and an MPU for determining whether received language information indicates the availability of the user-designated language. If the language information indicates that the user-designated language is available, the system generates audio output in the language.
However, such a conventional digital broadcast receiver as described above requires a user to separately input a language designated for caption output and a language designated for audio output, which may be cumbersome for the user. The system disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication 2002-335467 is designed to allow a user to designate a plurality of languages having different priorities so as to utilize information in a lot of languages that is contained in received signals. However, such a system requires a plurality of operations each for input of a language designated for caption output and a plurality of operations each for input of a language designated for audio output, thus increasing the number of operations to be performed by a user. Accordingly, the system may cause further inconvenience to a user.